


Crimson Aurora

by darkmochecoffee



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, I took liberties, Jaeger Pilots, Kaiju (Pacific Rim), M/M, Minor Character Death, Oops, The Drift (Pacific Rim), a little action, everyone has a traumatic experience, kinda soft, sorry - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-07
Updated: 2019-02-07
Packaged: 2019-10-23 22:26:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17692277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkmochecoffee/pseuds/darkmochecoffee
Summary: [pacific rim!au]The Mark Xs were the light at the end of the tunnel. Jaegers were still the most sensible tactic to combat the Kaiju, bigger Jaegers for bigger monsters. But it hadn’t been easy, more than billions needed to make one, drift compatible rangers that came in a quartet was also rare. The Crimson Hydra was only good if its pilots were in top notch condition.And for fifteen long years, it was humanity’s last stand.Until it wasn't.





	Crimson Aurora

**Author's Note:**

> first off, i am so so, so sorry prompter THIS IS AN UNFINISHED WORK. i promise to be done with this somehow. i couldn't drop out seeing as it's really a theme i wanted to write for such a long, long time now but never really got the courage to until this fest /cries/
> 
> DISCLAIMER: PACIFIC RIM IS NOT MINE, NOR JUNMYEON OR YIFAN. i took liberties and changed a few things here and there, prior knowledge of the film would be great but not necessary. 
> 
> voila, welcome to this mess.

There was something inherently fascinating about seeing a four hundred foot creature rise from the depths of absolutely nowhere.

 

They were called, __Kaiju,__ monster; strange creature. Junmyeon had been eight years old the first time he saw one. They called it __Warlock__ and it emerged from a sea near Junmyeon’s childhood home. He hadn’t understood the intricacies back then - the __whys__ and the __hows.__ His innocent eight year old mind couldn’t comprehend beyond the fact that his model toys were huge and very much __alive.__

__

There was so much screaming, Junmyeon did not understand why everybody seemed to scramble into every direction but __near__  the monster. Junmyeon had found it fascinating, it was the beauty of a child’s simple logic, there hadn’t been a single trace of fear.

 

Junmyeon watched through the thick glass walls of his confinement as __Warlock__ decimated downtown before it had been slayed by another __creature__. A humanoid robot which moved with almost clinical efficiency that shouldn’t have been possible for its size. Junmyeon had been fascinated by __Warlock__ but he’d been almost in love with the mechanism that destroyed it…with the three hundred eighty foot humanoid that sliced __warlock__ in half.

 

His parents, both scientists and engineers in the Pan Pacific Defense Corps, called it a __Jaeger.__ Junmyeon hadn’t heard the term before he turned twelve years old; his parents didn’t like to expose him to the brutality and violence of the world he’d been born into. They wanted to shield him from the __Kaiju__ and the _ _Jaeger.__ They were all monsters in their own ways.

 

But the brutal efficiency of the __Jaeg__ er had never escaped Junmyeon’s ceaseless fascination. He was eight years old when he first fell in love with the __Crimson Hydra.__ The very Jaeger that sliced Warlock in half, the precursor of the Mark-X Jaegers that were built for pilots who were genetically modified to be able to drift even when a co-pilot is down, genetically modified to handle the mental and physical strain of commanding a Jaeger which was made for four people.

 

Junmyeon learned of the Breach in the year 2029, sixteen long years after the first Kaiju appeared and the operations that partially failed in the year 2025 - the demolition of all anti-Kaiju walls and the complete decimation of more than half of the available Jaegers at that time. The Breach at the Mariana’s was closed but another erupted in the Horizon Deep in the southern Hemisphere, not even five years later.

 

Humanity has yet to rise from the ashes left by the monsters that wreaked havoc upon it. And as the years went by, the monsters - the __exterminators__ were bigger, faster and far more dangerous. Adapting and learning from the very mechanoids that were designed to annihilate them. Humankind was losing. Automatons were useless, sea walls were useless, underground bunkers were useless and even the available Jaegers seemed like ants, they were being destroyed faster than they can be built.

 

It had been bleak until -

 

Junmyeon was born in 2023, and he was eight years old when the very first Mark VII Jaeger, the Crimson Hydra, was deployed. It was piloted by four rangers, who were able to share the neural load for an almost four hundred foot Jaeger. It had stabilized nuclear weapons attached to its four appendages, all of which sliced and cauterized through __Warlock’s__  near impenetrable hide. Four incredibly drift compatible pilots that controlled each limb. It was luck.

 

The Mark Xs were the light at the end of the tunnel. Jaegers were still the most sensible tactic to combat the __Kaiju,__ bigger Jaegers for bigger monsters. But it hadn’t been easy, more than the billions needed to make one, drift compatible rangers that came in a quartet was also rare. The Crimson Hydra was only good if its pilots were in top notch condition.

 

And for fifteen long years, it was humanity’s last stand.

 

Until it wasn’t.

 

**_**_HONGKONG SHATTERDOME;_ ** _ **

**_**_AD 2050_ ** _ **

**_**** _ **

Junmyeon didn’t like what was happening, didn’t it like one bit.

 

The simulation cleared as he literally got ejected from the __drift__ when his drifting partner - some cadet named Sehun - collapsed into a convulsing heap.

 

“Pilot is down!” Junmyeon screamed, “someone get me a medic!” The metallic doors to the simulation room opened and emergency personnel came in, composed as ever. It’s been the third attempt to find Junmyeon a drift compatible partner within the month and everyone ended up convulsing on the floor. Junmyeon rather felt bad for the cadets.

 

“Ranger.”

 

Junmyeon stood straight and did a short salute. Marshal Cai clicked his tongue as the medics wheeled Sehun out of the room. “Again?” Junmyeon nodded. He knew it was coming because he was essentially abnormal. He unconsciously overpowered all his drifting partners and a stable neural handshake cannot be established because said partners could not handle the combined neural load.

 

Putting things into perspective, Junmyeon’s biology was designed to withstand eighty percent of the neural load between drift compatible partners and the instability caused pressure on the unfortunate rookie that couldn’t handle it. Junmyeon could have operated a Jaeger on his own but he still needed a co-pilot to maintain calibration, equilibrium and handle the last twenty percent that he couldn’t.

 

“Sleep it off kid, we’ll try again.”

 

Junmyeon was aware of what again entailed. He’s not willing to wait a next time, not now when a CAT-VIII Kaiju almost decommissioned the Crimson Hydra after killing two of its four pilots

 

He inhaled, if they didn’t act fast enough, there won’t be a next time.

 

“Get me into the procedure.” Junmyeon half demanded. “I want to get a modification for a Mark X.”

 

Marshal Cai, Junmyeon’s own uncle, squared his shoulder. “We’ve had this discussion before, ranger. And my decision is final.”

 

“As far as I’m concerned, I can get the mod in my own power.” Junmyeon said. He felt brave and stupid at the same time. But what needed to be done, should be done. “I’ll do this uncle - marshal, and not because I want to disobey your orders, I’ll do it because I can’t stand the fact that I’ve been sheltered all my life while everyone around me dies.”

 

Junmyeon exited the simulation room, his limbs ached and his head throbbed from tapping into someone’s memories, from being into someone’s head.

 

 

Junmyeon was Korean born in the Hongkong Shatterdome. His father was J-tech, one of the engineers who helped develop the Crimson jaegers, known as the first line of Mark Xs that needed four drift compatible pilots or two genetically modified ones. His mother was in K-science, a scientist who pooled her knowledge into a gene mod theory so that pilots could be anyone as long as they were able bodied and fought well, they didn’t need to be drift compatible. It was a gene modification that created artificial drifting capabilities but Junmyeon knew better than what’s written on the classified dossier they have on it.

 

The gene modification alters or erases memories. It wipes out a pilot’s head so technically they carry nothing into the drift. Fighting patterns came in a chip that could be replaced depending on which pattern was incorporated into the jaeger. Jaegers are made to adjust to its pilots but with gene modification, it’s the pilot that becomes part of the jaeger and not the other way around.

 

Junmyeon was desperate for it. It might cost him his own life but it’s a small price to pay until the PPDC finally finds a way to seal all breaches once and for all.

 

He’s never been out of Hongkong and most of his life spent inside the garish, rusty walls of the Shatterdome. If you’d ask him, he’d tell you that he’s almost an organic part of it, he’d been integrated into the place that he could walk through its halls with his eyes closed.

 

The Shatterdome almost looked like a warehouse, in the crudest sense. It’s roof peaked at six hundred foot, and opened, ironically, like an ugly dying flower at times of Jaeger deployment. The main entrance is called Scramble alley, which contained a ramp that held a jaeger minutes before it’s sent for a blood bath. Across Scramble Alley is a protruding mezzanine. LOCCENT. The central command point of the shatterdome, teeming with wall to wall holographic displays solely dedicated to Kaiju activity. It directed everything that happened in the shatterdome, in the jaegers, and on the Breach.

 

The first time he stepped into the dome after completing his ranger program there had been seven jaegers stationed in Hongkong alone, now a mere five remained, five for the entire world.  

 

There’s so much movement. A combination of technicians, workers and scientists crowded around every Jaeger, tinkering, fixing, working like one biological organism. It was Junmyeon’s norm, and he’s watching everyone else, fully aware that one of these days, if they don’t manage to seal the breach, everything will end. Everyone will die.

 

it’s a most vulnerable feeling but Junmyeon refused to cry and whine. Everyone knew the world was ready for hell, people will die as kaiju food but it didn’t matter. As long as someone was alive, hope was alive. And if they were to die, at least they died trying.

 

He brisk walked out of the facility, feeling asphyxiated all of a sudden.

 

//

 

If there had been a change in Hongkong weather, Junmyeon was probably too young to remember. In his waking thoughts and older memories, Hongkong had always been a perpetually rainy place. They say it was a side effect of the Kaiju. The monsters ruined the globe, fucked up its climate to a considerable degree that seasons melded into each other without distinction.

 

A lot has happened since but one thing that remained a constant was the night life. Hongkong still crawled with far too much people, uncaring of the kaiju or at least pretending that nothing has changed. Junmyeon reckoned it was the right mindset. In order to survive, people must cope. And cope people did.

 

They said the Kaiju was from the gods. Humans were evil, vile creatures and needed to be punished. It’s what the fanatics preached, intoxicated from whatever they took in order to forget. And some people believed. The crazy ones worshiped the kaiju, built temples around its decaying bones and gave the deceased monster another life.

 

The crazier ones, well they made money out of it. The black market thrived with kaiju spare parts - bones, skin, organs, acidic blood even its parasites. There was an ongoing craze about it, from the most banal thing to the…disturbed. From trophies to immortality, the kaiju provided it.

 

And Hongkong was akin to a central hub of kaiju black market activity. One crazy billionaire every square mile, rich from selling every kaiju part imaginable. Junmyeon could not blame people. Everyone chose their own poison, to cope.

 

The ranger continued to traverse the cobbled streets, the path was a mapped labyrinth in his head.

 

Since the 2025 attack, every city with a Shatterdome erected its own doomsday clock. However, the clock is more of a theater sized display than a clock. Usually found in the city center, it carries a foreboding reminder that a catastrophe can strike any minute. 

The gigantic screen was never turned off. Twenty four hours, seven days a week it relayed information on every kaiju activity on the Breach. Some of the data directly lifted from the LOCCENT in the city’s corresponding shatterdome. Junmyeon stared at it, ignoring the liquid that was pelting his forehead and blurring his vision.

 

_1:13:56:03_

_1:13:56:02_

_1:13:56:01_

One day, thirteen hours, fifty six minutes. The last attack happened a mere thirty-eight hours ago and the clock was resetting almost weekly. It was frightening, when a CAT-VIII almost decommissioned the Crimson Hydra after killing two of its four pilots. One of the deceased had been Junmyeon’s father’s best friend.

 

His father merely blinked when he took in the news earlier that morning. And Junmyeon also did not blink as the body count rolled down the screen like the end credits of a horror movie. In the era of the kaiju, dying young seemed inevitable for everyone. Massive tragedies did not seem as horrifying when they happen so often. Families cry, bury the remains and then they resumed on running.  

 

Junmyeon often found himself wondering if he’s ever going to see the end of it. He’d been born into chaos, and this chaos reared him. He’s never known peace in his lifetime and like everyone else he longed for it. He longed for a lofty utopia. These thoughts occupied his mind until the handsome face of major general Yifan Wu, appeared on the screen.

 

Junmyeon had read his dossier. Yifan Wu was only a few years older than Junmyeon, give or take half a decade. He showed such promising talents as a cadet that the PPDC deployed him immediately after finishing his Jaeger program. Stationed in the Shanghai shatterdome and commissioned for the Mark - X Jaeger, Crimson Aurora, Asian countries nearest the Ring of Fire were protected during his watch.

 

His co-pilot was Zhang Yixing. The slightest, most unassuming man Junmyeon had ever seen but fought so unpredictably well. The two piloted a Mark X without having to undergo gene mod and more than the drift compatible quartet that manned Crimson Hydra, Yifan and Yixing were the PPDC’s most prized rangers.

 

They were lovers and maybe that made their neural handshake the most stable in written history. A drift creates a handshake - two people’s minds melding into each other until no one knew where one ended and the other began. It takes a certain level of trust, to allow another human being to step into your head.

 

And the more stable the handshake, the better the odds of killing kaiju.

 

But Zhang Yixing was dead. KIA a mere thirty-eight hours ago when the CAT-VIII managed to partially destroy both Hydra and Aurora. A two-jaeger drop hadn’t been enough.

 

The world was really ending.

 

Junmyeon stared at the general’s face. He looked severe and war torn, a soldier who’d fallen, crawled through mud and emerged a changed man. His jet black hair was shaved a little bit longer than the prescribed military buzz cut every man in the shatterdome had. On his face is a noticeable scar that began from under his left eye and cut sideways to his jaw. Junmyeon was aware of which monster gave him that scar; __Tempest__  a CAT-VI kaiju. Aurora managed to take it down in 2045, but not before it clawed Aurora’s Conn Pod consequently overloading the circuitry on the general’s helmet and burning a jagged line on his face. It happens.

 

Junmyeon stood in front of the doomsday clock, uncaring of the rain until the com unit stuffed into his right ear beeped, signaling a message.

 

__All cadets report to Shatterdome at 1900 hours._ _

__All cadets report to Shatterdome at 1900 hours._ _

__

The com unit promptly turned off. Junmyeon shrugged, turned and walked back.

 

__//_ _

__

The first time he met Wu Yifan, was generally not a very good memory.

 

They finished their ranger program almost together, went at each others’ throats for a chance to pilot a jaeger and be a celebrated hero. In the earlier years of the Kaiju War, that had been the priority, to be a celebrity and the frontman for a propaganda. It didn’t seem as severe back then, but then humanity started losing.

 

Yifan was what people will eventually call, gifted. He was the son of a business tycoon, rich from the get go. Their mentors used to joke that it was his money the PPDC needed, not him. Junmyeon used to laugh at this too. Yifan never said anything, allowing his skills to do the talking.

 

The two of them always seemed to emerge on top of everyone else. They had the best simulation scores, aptitude scores and sometimes before things got overly competitive, they were drift compatible.

 

And then Yixing came into the picture, and Yifan found his match.

 

Junmyeon smiled wryly at the thought. Seven years later, he’s still a damn cadet and Yifan was already a decorated ranger. What were the odds.

 

Marshal Cai stared at Hongkong Bay through his window, probably allowing Junmyeon to process the information he’d been given. “If you want to be in a jaeger this is your best chance.”

 

The cadet stared at the folder in his hand. It was the dossier of the two-jaeger drop mission on the CAT-VIII kaiju, __Reaper.__ Junmyeon could not gather any relevant information on the document except for the very detailed report on the death of three rangers.

 

“After a thorough investigation with Hydra’s tech team, we’ve decided to deliver her to Oblivion Bay. __Reaper__ almost tore her to pieces. Restoration is too much work.”

 

“What about Aurora?”

 

“Aurora is a Mark X.” The Marshal lit a cigarette, his actions lethargic. “The monster plucked off Captain Zhang from the Conn Pod and tore one limb but she can be repaired. But as talented as General Wu is, he can’t pilot her alone. He’s arriving in Hongkong in a few hours, be ready. I’ve put you on the cadet list.”

 

“With all due respect Marshal, I don’t think it’s going to work without gene mod.”

 

“We’ll try son, we’ll try.”

 

//

 

“Two-Two.”

 

Junmyeon hovered a closed fist above Yifan’s face before promptly springing back to his feet. Yifan didn’t give him a chance to regain his bearings, as he kicked Junmyeon’s legs sending him to the ground. Yifan had him pressed, face first against the mat, his knee digging into Junmyeon’s back and a palm closing around Junmyeon’s neck.

 

“Three-two.”

 

Junmyeon elbowed the general on the ribs in quick succession. The older, winded from the action, loosened his grip around Junmyoen’s neck, giving the cadet a chance to turn around hitting him across the face.

 

“Three-three.”

 

They both got up, leveling each other with a blank stare.

 

It’s the Drift.

 

Every slight of hand, the shuffle of feet, every small move; it’s like they could predict what’s coming. It’s not even about the aggression of their actions but the way they could read each other. For a moment, Junmyeon saw an opening. He grabbed the general’s shoulders, using the momentum to lift himself up. Yifan might have predicted that Junmyeon was about to choke him (which Junmyeon did by wrapping his legs around the man’s neck) but Yifan never did anything about it. They fell to the ground, panting.

 

“Three-four.” Junmyeon gasped. “Which means I win.”

 

“You never changed, Junmyeon.” Yifan chuckled derisively.

 

Junmyeon stood up. “Is that an insult, general Wu?”

 

“Depends.”

 

Before Junmyeon could word an equally derisive comeback, Marshal Cai stepped into the room. Yifan and Junmyeon saluted the older officer, who simply glanced at them. “Let’s see if the both of you would work well enough inside a Jaeger. Get some sustenance and then we’ll proceed with trial runs.”

 

Junmyeon wanted to believe it would work.


End file.
